The wolf
by polkadotmonkey
Summary: a strange girl turns up at the tower one night, seeming to know all about hydra, and from that point everything spirals
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: unwanted visitor**

"Why are you all at my tower?" Tony was standing with an empty glass in his hand, staring oddly into his lift, which held Steve, Natasha, and Clint, all but Clint looked dishevelled. Not surprising taking it was 1 in the morning. The four stood in awkward silence.

"You called us, there was an emergency" broke Natasha, who had regained composure but looked ready to punch Tony.

"No, I woke up 10 minutes ago and was going to put this empty glass in the bar"

"Yeah, we picked up on that" commented Clint, not bothering to look at Tony as he walked out the lift without waiting for invitation, instantly memorizing everything in the room. "So why did only us three get a call, from your number, yelling about some indistinguishable nonsense then 'emergency help', that's what's important."

"Actually I got a message too" Bruce entered, dressed in green pyjama bottoms and a baggy grey t shirt, he was rubbing his eyes while holding out his phone for them to read, 'meet by lift- Tony' it read.

Tony reached out and grabbed the phone, quickly analysing the text.

"Do any of you still have your phone" he said looking back to the tree who had now all exited the lift, Natasha held out her phone the voice message on screen.

Tony talked while he worked, "You both got the messages at different times, Bruce only got one when I was talking to you by the lift, you got one earlier, meaning someone's watching us. I've got to figure out who really sent these", he plugged the phones into his main computer system and brought the images up infront of him. "Jarvis, track where the sound on the voice message comes from and who sent the messages"

"The sound is from one of your parties at the old house, and I sent the messages", all turned with confusion at the computers voice.

"Wait, you sent the messages?" demanded Tony. "Why?"

"Sir, my systems have been hacked, I closed the security system, I was unable to inform you sir, I messaged your friends the best way I could to get them to come, all but Bruce sir, the hacker did that themselves"

"Meaning they…" started Steve

"Are in this room yes, took you long enough to work that one out, not like I was sitting on the bar or anything" an accented young female voice rang out across the room from the direction of the bar.

The two ex-assassins were already pointing their guns at the intruder by her 2nd word, the soldier was in a fighting stance by her 4th, the inventor and the scientist only focused on the dark outline of the intruder when she had stated her position. Tony tried to place the girls' accent, eastern European?

"Who are you?" asked Natasha, well, more of a command.

The girl gave a small laugh and jumped off the counter she had been sitting on, stepping into the light illuminating the main space, she was tall, about 5'8, and had olive skin. Definitely a teenager, although she walked like Natasha, powerful and fully aware of it. He couldn't see any more of her feature as she had a black hoodie covering her hair and was still too far to see any distinct facial features, like eye colour. All her clothing was black, but not in a gothic, more for stealth. She was wearing a fully zipped up hoodie, leggings, combat boots, and a single glove covering her left hand. She stopped about 2m away from the group staring at her, pulled a packet of gum out her pocket, offered them at the group, shrugged at the group when none accepted, put the packet back in her pocket after removing a stick for herself, then just stood there, chewing.

Clint spoke up to break the silence, "I'm guessing you're here as a friend", he said while putting away his gun, he preferred a bow but guns were easier to carry. Natasha and Steve followed his example and adopted less hostile positions.

"More of an ally, if you don't mind." She answered, sending the room back into silence.

Steve went for a formal approach with the supposed ally. "I'm Steve, but you already know that, so, what's your name?"

"Any personal information about me I will tell in due course, until then call me Volchitsa."

"Shewolf" translated Natasha. "Why that?"

"It was my working name, my partner was Volk, and it fitted how we were trained and other personal attributes."

Information of her past, Clint realised by saying partner she had hinted at assassin, not lover. Russian assassins? If she was, Nat hadn't recognized her, and the accent didn't fit, the accent sounded Romanian, but not completely. He also was confused by the age, the girl looked 17 at the most, and even by assassin standards, most of whom were 20's to 30's, that was young.

"How old are you?" Tony, blunt as ever.

"Formalities over, now what I need your assistance with." The girl completely ignored Tony.

She walked over to Tony's laptop that lay open and plugged in a USB stick. Instantly documents opened on the screen, she brought up the information on the hologram system Tony had in place. Then zoomed in on one file in particular, an image of two scientists standing side by side laughing together appeared on screen, one was tall and thin while the other short and plump, the difference was laughable.

"This is Dr. Wolff, he was a hydra scientist in war times, and after but not openly. Here he's pictured next to Dr. Zola, a man that Steve and Natasha will be familiar with, Steve here especially."

They turned to Steve, who was practically ridged in his stance, back straight, arms folded, and chin up.

"Zola was a Hydra scientist working closely with red skull, and was working on a way to replicate the serum that I was injected with when I met him as well as designing weapons for hydra, after the war he went into other areas of science and was one of the founders of the new hydra" stated Steve, hatred filling his voice, "he experimented on captured soldiers."

"Complete jerk, but I can guarantee Wolff was equal, if not worse. Originally he was just a Nazi scientist, working on how to make the 'perfect German', but after some particular discoveries he was booted up to Hydra. He would experiment on victims of the camps, when he moved to hydra though he got much more availability of victims, if twins or triplets arrived, they were immediately sent to him, provided they were under 18 originally, but then they had to be between 3-18, the babies were hard to work on and always died much quicker than others. He was best buddies with Zola, although Zola preferred adults. They shared all their discoveries, all the different drugs, serums, technology, they were bad enough on their own, but together… worse than all the fallen." Volchitsa stated, her tone was neutral betraying no emotion, but Clint was observant to say the least, and had noticed a slight shake in her exposed hand on certain words, 'twins', 'babies', 'drugs', 'serums', 'technology'.

"So what? This guy still alive or something? He'd have to be at least 95 or something" asked Bruce who had remained silent till this moment.

Bruce liked Volchitsa, she was cold, rude, and not very trustworthy (although that didn't stop him trusting her), but radiated intelligence, was obviously on their side, and seemed familiar somehow, although he had very mixed feeling about that.

"No, he died in 2000, but he started a branch of hydra which is still operational."

"Wait, there are other branches of hydra then the one from shield?" This time it was Steve's turn to do the questioning.

"Yes, and they make the one you know of look like a group of school kids. They never got discovered, so never got shut down. Where do you think they kept James while Zola was rebuilding the main body of Hydra? In a fridge?"

Steve froze, Bucky. The rest of the group caught on quickly, they had known Bucky's real name was James Buchanan Barnes, but had never heard him referred to that way. They watched Steve closely, Steve had only known that his friend was alive for about a year, and had been searching for leads and clues into his past and current position, but apart from some cold war assassinations that were confirmed as his and the files Natasha had obtained from some old links in Russia, nothing was definite. He was no closer than he had been when they fought on that helicarrier. All had been very secret, how this girl knew about Bucky, information that he hadn't known, he had no idea.

"How…" he began.

"Yes, I know about tin man, I'm surprised you haven't found him yet, he's not exactly hiding. On a bit of a killing spree actually." Volchitsa stared pityingly at him before slipping back into an 'everyone but me is an idiot' tone. "Well, not that you'd know, I mean killing off a bunch of Hydra leaders doesn't really hit the news, lots of them are already considered dead. There was one that made the news, but that was made to look like a suicide so you probably didn't make the connection."

"We get it, you know stuff, get back to your point." Clint jumped in, they were getting off track and, yes Bucky was important, he was important to Steve so important to everyone, but she was here to make a point, not help find Bucky.

"Ok, back on point" Volchitsa turned back to the document "His granddaughter has just taken over after the death of her father, she's 24, fluent in 20 languages, trained in fighting, street fighting, not that whole 'follow certain moves and formations crap', ultimately she is deadly as fuck. And we're going to kill her and shut down this entire branch, which will be difficult taking they're the most secretive and dangerous."

"Why now? Why not earlier, or later for that fact? You know too much to have stumbled upon this by chance recently, you've admitted they are secretive, and you wouldn't just have gone on a whim deciding to tell us randomly." Stark asked the question they were all thinking, as well as implying something else.

The girl laughed and smiled at Tony, not the reaction he had expected.

"Research into these files I'm leaving you, I'll be back at the next full moon, if you could have the demi-god here by then I would be most grateful. See you soon, don't be a let-down." Volchitsa turned and ran onto the balcony of the tower, then without missing a beat dived off.

Steve, Tony, and Bruce ran after, but she had disappeared. Nat and Clint hadn't bothered, already predicting what had happened. Tony and the others walked back in, joining the assassins in staring at the documents still filling the area as a hologram.

"So, slumber party?" Tony stared at the surrounding faces, all disapproved but stayed at what Tony insisted on calling 'the super-slumber'.

It gave Pepper a surprise when she walked in on a room full of the Avengers snoring at 9am. Nat and Clint perched together on the top of the wall cupboards in the bar, scrunched and deadly silent in their sleep. Steve was sprawled on the sofa, drawl dripping onto a pillow as he snored. Bruce had been sensible and got his bedding out the spare room, crashing on the chair, curled and comfortable with a proper pillow and duvet. Tony lay where he had finally passed out, on top of his laptop, Pepper knew if he hadn't already been running off coffee for the last three days he would have made it, but there he was, snoring, drooling on his work. Gently she walked over and lifted him up, placing him on the floor with a pillow from the sofa (sleeping Steve was not pleased) under his head before going and grabbing a blankets for them. None but the assassins stirred as she covered them, she struggled to get to them, standing on a surface to reach them, their eyes had jumped open simply at her being within a meter but instantly closed as they recognised her. Pepper looked at what the world called 'earth's mightiest heroes', in reality, they acted like babies half the time. Sighing she went to go get breakfast from the tower cafeteria, home cooked food was off the tables when Tony had his friends (who were lovely, but made a mess, and slept everywhere but where they should) round.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"So your brothers dead"

"Yes"

She was late, so they had started small talk. Thor was here, luckily he had been visiting earth so they hadn't had to go to extreme lengths of finding him. They had all talked through what they had been doing since they were all together, everyone but Thor and Clint that is, they were on Thor now.

"He did an excellent impersonation of you Steve"

Steve looked blankly at the Asgardian. It had been a strange two weeks, research with Tony (him standing there while Tony blurted random stuff), Nat and Clint had been chasing up anyone who owed them something and might know about Hydra, Bruce had been looking into old research and experiments by Wolff, anything to do with the Nazi and Hydra (his field of Hydra, not Volchitsa's) experiments was his job. Meaning he had learnt and seen so much horror, in writing and pictures, what he'd been through felt like nothing.

"Sorry I'm late, I ran into some old friends"

Volchitsa walked across the room, no one saw where she entered, meaning the assassins nearly killed her as a natural reaction. She didn't react to the guns pulled on her, and started searching Starks cupboards.

"Stark, where do you keep the morphine?"

"I don't have morphine, why would I have morphine? Why the hell are you looking for morphine?"

She paused her look for medical supplies and pulled up the right side of her shirt, the skin was soaked in red.

"And that's a bullet wound" stated Clint, he and some of the others went to stand and help her but a quick glare in their direction pushed them back into their seats.

"Thank you Mr obvious, and I would be fine if someone" she glared at Stark "owned some FUCKING MORPHINE!" angrily she grabbed some bandages, a sewing needle and thread, and a bottle of vodka from the bar before limping over to a spare chair falling into it with a grunt. She took a swig of the alcohol then poured it on the bullet wound, she began work with the needle after pouring some vodka on that as well. There was silence apart from an occasional grunt of pain as they watched the teen treat her own wound, a bullet wound, with vodka and sewing supplies. She finished wrapping the wound and sunk back into the chair taking yet another swig from the bottle.

"What?" she questioned as they stared in silence.

"Well, A. you just stitched up a wound using supplies from my kitchen and bar, and B. you are way underage to be drinking" started tony

"Well I'd assume you had bigger issues on your mind then what I did with my body but I guess I was wrong, anyway I can't get drunk, and alcohol doesn't permanently damage me like it does normal humans, I'm literally drinking it as a pain killer." They stared at her strangely, normal human? As if to double her claim she took a massive swig of the bottle, which contained vodka, all but Thor, who didn't really understand the potency of vodka, grimaced. "Anyway, tell me what you found out and I'll fill in the blanks, Banner first" she said while wiping her mouth with her hand.

Everyone looked expectantly at Banner, who shuffled awkwardly in his chair before beginning.

"Well, in the experiments done by Wolff, it was mainly working on how to genetically engineer children. I mean, what they did to cap had about a 60% chance of killing him, Bucky it was even higher, he was the only one to survive out of 356 test subjects, and they were fully grown adults. And out of about 4000 children none survived the test"

"Why were they testing on children, as horrible as it sounds there were plenty of soldiers" chimed in Tony, receiving a glare from Steve.

"Kids are easier to mould into killers I guess, this was before the whole mind wipe thing. Twins, especially identical, were usually selected for quite a few reasons, the main being to see if it depended on the person or the genetic makeup as whether or not it worked, another was if it did work on both of them, the twins would probably work better together then two strangers, that also why if only one child was taken then another sibling would normally also be taken. As time developed and the war stopped so there wasn't as large supply of children, he got more and more into genetic studies and looking into the possibility of humans turning into animals, which is impossible, but he looked into every way it could happen. Then he got even weirder and began looking into human like lifeforms with advanced strength and abilities that could crossbreed with us, all theory, he never got evidence, but Thor, do you know of any asgardians that may have sparked the interest by being on earth in the 1960's?"

"I'm afraid not my friend, by my knowledge I was the first asgardian to set foot Midgard in little over 150 years."

"Well that's all I got, he disappears after the 60's"

"Hydra took him off the map in the 60's"

"What? Why would they kill him? He was one of their best scientists?"

"They didn't kill him, they just took away any evidence of his existence, not everything to do with Hydra is dark and murderous, and I mean 99% is dark and murderous but that 1%, still isn't very nice actually." She paused wincing and put pressure on the wound in her side. "Anyway Hydra didn't kill him, he died in 2000. Stark, your turn"

Tony stood up and pulled out a hologram of pictures and diagrams of weapons and machines. Steve leaned back in his chair as tony began a 10 minute long speech about the machinery Hydra had been working on. It was all relevant but there was one part at the end which particularly interested Steve.

"I found these buried in the Hydra files, whoever put them there really didn't want them found."

A metal arm blueprint shot up, it was similar to Bucky's, although not completely. It was designed for a smaller recipient, Bucky was 6ft and muscular, this arm obviously wouldn't have been proportionately correct. It would have been too small.

"This obviously isn't Bucky's, one, it's too small, two, it's built to extend down the side, three, the date's wrong, Bucky got his pretty much straight after the war, and four, it's designed for a female." Noted Natasha.

"How do you know it's designed for a female?" Volchitsa asked, she seemed intrigued at Nat's statement, as if she had known it was for a female and hadn't said anything but now it had been brought up wanted an explanation.

"Females and males are equally strong, but muscles form differently, females have stronger lower body muscles and males have stronger upper body muscles, basic biology. This arm, if it's designed like Bucky's was, should be a replica of the other arm, muscles and all, otherwise the body would have difficulty supporting it and using it. The muscles on this arm are unlike male upper body muscles, and very similar to female ones, which, unless you're a body builder, you normally can only properly see the size of when flexing. And it has a massive F next to gender at the bottom of the document."

"Fair enough"

"And I don't question this group's intelligence so I assume you've come to the conclusion that this means there is at least one more person out there like Bucky, prosthetics wise anyway" Said Tony, looking disappointed that he had been interrupted

"That could be very bad, we saw how powerful that thing on Bucky was" Steve said, glancing at Natasha, she nodded at him.

"If it was as bad as you think then wouldn't you have heard something from the girl with the arm, or at least had evidence of her existence?"

"Fair point" mumbled Clint over a mouthful of nuts he had grabbed from a bowl on the table, he was being very careful not to spill any on Natasha's lap.

"Well I'm sorry to say that the HYDRA situation is probably worse than you think, and the girl is dead, she died before they could get the arm on her"

"That's comforting"

The group sat as still and silent as Thor had been through the whole meeting.

"Any way, Steve, go."

"I didn't find anything new really. But there is a whole lot of evidence that Zola and the Russians were working on that super soldier serum during the cold war. Apparently they still hadn't figured out the full deal on the serum and either wanted to use it on their own soldiers or Bucky." Steve paused to look at Volchitsa, she had said she wasn't a normal human earlier hadn't she? "Also, back in the war times they weren't only testing on soldiers, Zola would go to some of the big concentration camps and test on the heavily pregnant women, then they would take the child, kill it and see how well the tests had worked on the unborn child. There wasn't much there."

"Fair enough, Clint and Natasha?"

"There's a bunch of bases underneath a scattering of lakes round Russia, all thought to have been closed down after the cold war but I have it on strong authority that they're still operational for Hydra" said Clint, watching Volchitsa anxiously.

"How do we know we can trust your lead?"

"Trust me they wouldn't have lied" The group stared at him, Clint realised the implications of his words. "I didn't torture them! They're just a very good friend. Plus they owed me big, I saved their life about 9 times"

"They don't sound very good at their job"

"No, they've saved me like 36 times" the group stared at him, whomever the contact was they were good.

They looked at Natasha.

"I got nothing new on the hydra case but there was hints about a pair of assassins working above the winter soldier." She stared at Volchitsa who gave no acknowledgement. "Anyway I looked into those assassinations, hydra officials have been going down regularly, all evidence point to the winter soldier's way of killing. Barnes has been busy." She said looking at Steve. He nodded thankfully at her.

Volchitsa got up and hissed through her teeth as her wound hurt.

"Speaking of James where is he, showering? Sleeping?" she inquired, staring at her wound.

The group stared at her, why would they know where he was? Steve was confused, didn't she know that Bucky was still AWOL? Realization dawned on Volchitsa's face.

"You mean he's not here?"

Steve nodded.

"Shit" she mummed through her teeth, and moved as quickly as she could to the elevator.

The doors opened before she reached it and a figure stumbled out, clutching their rib. Bucky.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Blood stained through Bucky's shirt and onto his hand. As Steve ran to him he backed off quickly but couldn't hold himself up so collapsed panting on the floor. Steve was by his side in an instant, moving the arm away to assess the damage, there was a long slice under his ribs, a knife wound.

"There must have been another team waiting for him, shit" muttered Volchitsa.

"What do you mean another team?!"

"I got shot by the fourth kill squad waiting for him, there must have been a fifth one!"

"Get something to help him" called Steve, Bucky was falling unconscious.

"Medical centre, now" commanded Tony, panic seeping into his voice.

Steve picked up his friend easily, and practically ran to the medical centre following Bruce and Tony. Clint, Nat, Thor, and Volchitsa where in pursuit of him. He lay Bucky down on a bed, Bruce pushed him out the way and he went to stand back with Tony, Thor, Natasha, and Volchitsa. Clint helped Bruce treat Bucky acting as an assistant, Bruce cut off Bucky's shirt so that he could see the damage, it was a long slice under the rib, instantly he grabbed some water and washed off the blood.

"All of you, out of the room now!" Bruce ordered. The group scuttled out of the room.

They stood in the hallway, Steve using the chair outside the room, his head weighing heavily on his hands. He raised his head as yelling came from the room.

"STEVE"

He ran into the room to see Bucky flailing and screaming, Clint was struggling to hold him on the table while Bruce was breathing deeply on the other side of the room clutching his arm.

"Steve, hold him down"

Steve grabbed his shoulders and pushed Bucky down flat on the table, it was hard to see his friend like this, screaming and trying to push Steve off, but Steve held him.

"I'm going to have to check inside the wound for anything bad internally, it's not deep so hopefully he'll be fine" informed Bruce shakily moving towards the table. "Really hold him still"

"Can't we put him under?!" asked Clint who had gone to help Steve hold the metal arm.

"I need to sort the wound out now, we can't wait unless something major's been damaged" Bruce began to pry into the wound, increasing Bucky's screams and desperation to shake Steve off.

Bruce rose from the wound. "Ok, I can stitch him up now. Clint grab that needle, and the thread" he turned back to the patient before looking up again "grab the anaesthetic, make it a strong dose."

As Clint handed him the anaesthetic he quickly wiped a patch of skin on his arm with an alcoholic wipe and jabbed the needle in. Almost instantly the struggle to keep Bucky still stopped. Steve took a shaky step back, small splashes of blood where on his shirt. Most of it was Bucky's but some of it was his own, gained from trying to keep someone with the skill and training of the winter soldier down. But he refused to think of his friend like that.

After what seemed like forever, Bruce finished the stitching. Stepping back to take a breath. He looked up at Steve and Clint.

"He'll be out for a while yet from the anaesthetic, then he'll probably be under from the drip I'm hooking him up to for a few days. Steve, if you want to stay Tony has a spare pull out bed we can move in here."

"I'll go get it with the other" said Tony addressing Bruce from the doorway, where a crowd had gathered.

"If everyone else wants to go do that I'll finish up in here"

"I'll stay." Said Volchitsa.

"What"

"I said if Steve's staying so am I"

"Bu…"

"It's ok. I don't mind" interrupted Steve.

Volchitsa gave him a thankful look, she hadn't wanted to reveal why it was so important to her to stay with tinny. If they knew now, they'd never help her.

The others cleared the room leaving only, Bruce, who was attaching an IV to one of Bucky's arms and attaching drips to it, Steve, who was staring intrigued at Volchitsa, and Volchitsa, who was staring solemnly at Bucky, or James as she called him.

Steve waited a few moments before asking "how do you know him?" Volchitsa's eyes darted to meet his gaze.

"Can I instead answer why they sent kill squads, and five for that matter?"

Steve nodded. Better than no information at all. Plus he was curious, it seemed excessive even for someone like Bucky.

"They sent kill squads because James has gone off the rails before, he's killed handlers, scientists, just generally gone missing. But this time he had a memory trigger, a severe memory trigger. The other times he has started remembering small things, his birthday, small flashes of memory that he can't get much from. This time it's more dangerous, even if they caught him they'd never properly get him back without risk. He's useful but not indispensable. It's easier just to kill him then risk having an enemy as strong as the winter soldier. You know what he's been doing over the last 6 months. HYDRA wanted to put a stop to it."

She paused to look again at Bucky. "They sent so many because he's tough, he can take down two or three but by the time he's at the fourth, he'd be tired. Slowing down. By then he'd only just be moving quicker than the kill squad, and in their number they could take him out. I took out the fourth as normally there are only that many but got shot in the process because I didn't see a guy in an ally as I was looking for James. The last group were probably there for me, James would've definitely been shot if they had proper guns taking they had a chance to stab him. Meaning they weren't planning on killing."

"All done. I'll leave you two and see how the others are." Bruce broke the pause of her words and left the room.

Steve watched to make sure he was gone. "Why were they there for you?" the questioned with caution.

"Just know that me and James, our stories aren't that dissimilar" she sighed avoiding Steve's eyes as they tried to meet hers. "We both belonged to HYDRA, we both killed for HYDRA. We both lost because of HYDRA" her facial expression was grim.

Steve stared at her in confusion but was interrupted by Tony and the others barging through the door before he could say anything.

"Bad news and good news. I only have one put up bed but I also found one of my junior school science experiments! It makes popcorn, roasts marshmallows, and hot chocolate!"

"You made a sleepover food machine?" asked Volchitsa, glancing at Natasha to see if he was serious, she nodded. A grin instantly spread on her face.

"Pretty much yeah"

"Fine by me, but I'm on the bed." She said grinning mischievously at Steve, but he could pick up on the silent message behind her eyes, don't say anything.

"No it's fine, obviously the youth of today isn't what it was when old men had priority" joked Steve with sarcasm. Returning her look with a reassurance he wouldn't.

"Getting shot takes priority."

"Yeah it's fine, take the bed." Laughed Steve patting her shoulder. "Now let's get this bed set up"

As the team pushed the bed round the room into an appropriate spot Volchitsa mouthed a thank you at him.

He nodded back subtly, he didn't trust her yet but there was something about her… two things really, one told him he could, the other told him to get away as quickly as possible.

As soon as they set up the bed they began to file out after Tony who was promising some kind of food, leaving only Steve in the room. Volchitsa, with a promise she wouldn't disappear, had gone up to the roof.

It ended with Clint (drunk) shooting an apple off Thor's head, Natasha proving that Russians are very good with their drink, then Thor proving Asgardians aren't (when it comes to Asgardian alcohol at least), and Tony, being Tony.

And it all (in Tony's opinion) was going great. Until Pepper arrived home from a night flight. At which point she had ducked a glass that just so happened to be in line with her head. Said hello to Natasha yelled at Tony for destroying their living room, tried to send Clint home (he was too drunk to do anything of use) but he just ended up in the air vents making a new nest. And forced everyone to clean up. When they were done she sent everyone to their respective rooms. She'd had a room for each of them made after one of them randomly turning up became a regular occurrence. They'd left muttering apologies, even Nat. Who was pretty good friends with Pepper and had been teaching her kick boxing.

Before he himself had gone to bed, Bruce had gone to check on his patient. Volchitsa was back in there sitting on her bed. Steve was fast asleep leaning on the hospital bed, one of his arms acting as a pillow and the other holding Bucky's real arm.

As he walked in Volchitsa looked up and held her figure to her lips "he's been out for the last hour" she whispered. Bruce nodded and tiptoed round the room checking vitals. He couldn't help trying to place her accent, now she was more tired it had become stronger. If anything though it sounded more German than Russian like he had first thought.

"You're trying to place where I'm from aren't you?"

He turned to her

"If you're thinking Europe you're on the right track. I'm originally German, but at 8 I moved to Romania for a few years before then moving between Russia and England for the last few years. Hence why" she broke into a very clear English accent "I can speak like this. But when I'm tired I go more towards my German accent. Usually the way I speak is a mix of the four."

"If you don't mid me asking, if you're from that area, why the skin and looks" Bruce tenderly asked. She had brown skin, thick black hair with blueish green eyes but didn't look like any people of those features he'd ever seen.

"I'm descended from the Romani people, a lot of these looks come from that gene pool, eyes are from my father, he was white, and apparently my facial features are like his were."

"Apparently?"

"Haven't seen him since I was seven, there was a good reason, just can't remember it"

"Oh"

"Yeah"

They stood awkwardly in the silence. They had already been whispering but now if a penny dropped it would be too loud.

"You need anything else"

"No" Bruce began walking to the door. Before he exited he turned back, "Do you want me to check that bullet wound?"

"No" came the sharp answer. He left.


End file.
